We’ve reported on some crazy rumors before (some even very recently), but we can’t honestly remember something as outrageous as what we’re going to talk about today. The craziness of the speculation(s) is only exceeded by the far-fetched nature of the rumor however, so take everything you’re going to hear with much caution and a grain of salt the size of a phablet.

Ready? Here goes. According to an esato forum user going by the “codename” of coolkid8689, Sony is hard at work in prepping not one and not two high-end phones for 2013, but four. And a 4-incher that looks like it could nicely fit in that small gap between mid-range and top-tier.

Let’s take them one by one, shall we? First, there’s the 4-incher, dubbed Xperia 4 and equipped with a 720p display, a 12 MP rear-facing shooter, an MSM8960T processor, 1.5 GB of RAM, microSD support, 16 GB of on-board storage, and a 1,800 mAh battery.

Now I know what you’re going to say. How the fudge can I call this a mid-ranger? Well, I definitely can, because if this is a high-ender, the next ones are super-ultra-high-enders. Take the “Xperia 5”, for example.

This is said to come with a 1080p display, a 13 MP camera, an APQ8064 Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, LTE, 2 GB of RAM, microSD support, 32 GB of internal memory and a 2,400 mAh battery. Much better than the 4-incher, don’t you think?

The Xperia 5R is the second high-end Sony phone planned to come out in 2013, but it will not differ from the Xperia 5 all that much. The only notable upgrades will be a beefier 2,800 mAh battery and water resistance, so it’s a good chance this’ll be a regional version of the Xperia 5 (probably for Asia).

So, is this enough to pique your interest and start considering Sony a worthy competitor for Samsung? No? Well, how about if we throw an “Xperia 6” in the mix, with a 1080p 6-inch panel, a 13 MP cam, an S4 Pro CPU, LTE, 3 GB of RAM (say whaaaat?!?!), microSD, 32 GB of storage, and a whopping 3,500 mAh battery.

Dayum, that sounds like one hot beast of a phone, but wait, there’s more. How can there be more? There just is, because, according to speculations, Sony’s already thinking two steps ahead with a 5-inch flagship for Q4 2013 in the works.

This is in “early design phase” though, so the spec sheet is preliminary and possibly subject to drastic changes. That said, brace yourselves, because the unnamed device is said to be coming with a yet to be released quad-core A15 CPU, 3 GB of RAM, a 3,000 mAh battery and a 16 MP rear-facing camera. Out of words? I know I am.

Hate to do this to you after all that sensational news, but daydreaming aside, we have to be honest – there’s little to no evidence backing these rumors and the source is definitely not one we can call trustworthy.

The only details that seem to check out in the entire story are Xperia 5’s specs, which are very similar to the ones leaked for the Odin. That would probably make the Yuga the same device as the 5R, but the other three are nothing more than wild cards. Oh, right, and the naming scheme is not to be trusted either as much sense as it would make.

So, all things considered, who here thinks Sony might have all this madness prepped? And who thinks the “intel” is complete and utter nonsense?

Unfortunately, that might as well come to an end today when we’re hearing the first less than impressive story about the Odin. The phone was spotted in an AnTuTu benchmark test and, based on that, we’re starting to doubt it will equipped with the early rumored quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU.

The Odin only scored a total of 8,753 points in AnTuTu, which is not only less than impressive, but mediocre altogether. For comparison, we’ve seen the quad-core LG Optimus G and Samsung Galaxy Note 2 score over 13,500 in the same benchmark, so chances are Sony’s “flagship” will only be a dual-core device after all.

Then again, it’s possible this is just a testing unit of the Odin, but if that’s the case Sony has a lot of work to do and an early 2013 release becomes unlikely.

On the flip side (there is one), it seems that the Xperia Odin will still come with 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of on-board storage, microSD support, a 5-inch full HD display, a 13 MP rear-facing shooter, a 2,370 mAh battery and Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, all of which are top-tier specs. But will those be enough to make up for the supposed low performance of this big guy’s chip? We can only wait and see.

Sony Odin and Yuga rumors galore for a while, which might come as a surprise for some, considering that the two phones are basically confirmed as launching next year. Still, when you think of the duo’s speculated spec sheets, you probably start to understand why we simply can’t stop talking about them.

Well, not so much shine as discreetly make its presence felt with a few camera snapshots. The pictures that were supposedly taken with Odin’s monster 13 MP rear-facing cam don’t exactly make use of that whopping Exmor RS sensor, but bring new solid evidence backing the phone’s existence.

According to the photos’ EXIF data, they have been taken with a Sony C6502/C6503 device, which are the codenames of the Xperia Odin. Of course, the EXIF data can be manipulated and rigged, but why would anyone go to so much trouble?

As for the images’ mediocre quality, that shouldn’t worry us too much. We highly doubt the pics were taken with the camera set at high-res settings, not to mention there’s a good chance they were snapped with the front-facing cam, which would make them actually pretty impressive.

Sadly, there’s nothing else these photos reveal, so nothing major has changed since last time we spoke about the Odin. The phone is thus still rumored to be the global version of the Yuga, packing a quad-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, 2 GB of RAM and a 2,300 mAh battery in a body measuring 9.8 mm in thickness and weighing 147 grams.

The Yuga, as its sibling, will also sport a Full HD 5-inch display, being said to come to the States on T-Mobile sometime next Spring after a very likely CES 2013 unveiling. Who’s excited?

We don’t know if the two events are tied in any way, but right after Sony issued its latest bittersweet financial quarterly report, a new Xperia Odin image leaked. This is the second pic to reach the interwebs in the last couple of weeks, which makes us wonder if Sony isn’t actually planning to release the new super-phone by the end of the year.

The Japanese did say that “improving the profitability of the smartphone business” is one of the company’s main concerns right now, so why not do something about that before CES or MWC 2013? We would certainly appreciate the element of surprise, not to mention that the Odin could enjoy some holiday season attention.

Those are of course just wild speculations, so let’s turn our focus back to what we know and have on our hands. This latest photo of the Odin is dubbed a “render”, so it doesn’t necessarily have to reflect reality in its fullness, although it looks almost identical to the first pic leaked.

Again, we have to appreciate the extremely thin bezel on the sides, but also the distinguished and elegant overall look that doesn’t replicate any previous Sony Xperia design. What looks a bit off however is the device’s apparent limited height, which makes us doubt that this is actually a 5-incher.

That’s a problem we also noticed on the first image, so this may not be the Odin after all, or it could all be a hoax.

Unfortunately, even if the photo is real, this doesn’t reveal any new intel on the phablet’s spec sheet, so we still only “know” that the C650X Odin will come with a 1080p panel, a quad-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, and 2 GB of RAM. There will definitely be Android Jelly Bean inside too, although we’re unsure if it’ll be version 4.1 or 4.2.

The device is supposed to be a phablet ready to take on similar products from the competition, including the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, the HTC J Butterfly or the LG Intuition. However, it’s only today that we got to look at an image of the smartphone, which has been apparently photographed in the wild – and I’m not just speaking metaphorically.

The image above, found by Italian blog Androic Caotic on Japanese site Rbmen, shows a device that has clear “Sony” and “Xperia” markings. And from the looks of it, we’re looking at a very large almost-bezel-free edge-to-edge display, which is quite an interesting design choice for the phablet.

The handset is not turned on, and we have no confirmation that this is indeed the Odin phablet, so we’ll remind you, as always, to take such leaks with a grain of salt.

According to existing reports, the Odin will feature a 5-inch full HD display (1920 x 1080 resolution), a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and 2GB of RAM.

When it comes to release date and pricing, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Odin unveiled in just a few months, at CES 2013, although we’re probably see more Odin-related leaks in the mean time.